Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents

This short book is about a major Supreme Court decision dealing with civil rights, or lack of civil rights, in America.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a Supreme Court case decided in 1896. The issue was a Louisiana state law requiring railway companies to provide separate railroad cars for black and white citizens. The Court ruled that “separate but equal” was constitutional, notwithstanding Constitutional Amendments 13 and 14. This book provides an overview of important Court decisions just prior to Plessy (e.g. the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Civil Rights Cases), and the reactions to it by national press, legal periodicals, and influential African American writers of the day (W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt). It show more concludes with an analysis of how the NAACP proceeded from that case to eventually, 50 years later, winning the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, that finally struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine. The book is concise and informative, and because the topic is unfortunately still relevant today, it is worth reading. show less